First whiffs of atmospheric oxygen triggered onset of crustal gold cycle

Lack of a suitable gold source has long been regarded as a major argument against a palaeoplacer model for the exceptionally well-endowed Witwatersrand gold province. By comparing worldwide Witwatersrand-type deposits/occurrences, ranging in age from 3.1 to 1.8 Ga, we propose that the primary concentration of gold in the continental crust resulted from atmospheric and biological evolution in the Mesoarchaean. A high Au flux off the Archaean land surface (orders of magnitude greater than today’s) was a consequence of the chemistry of the Mesoarchaean atmosphere and hydrosphere. When early life gradually changed from anaerobic anoxygenic to oxygenic photosynthesizers at around 3.0 Ga, the first ‘whiffs’ of free oxygen produced by photosynthesis under an overall reducing atmosphere provided the ideal trap for Au dissolved in the huge reservoir in meteoric and shallow sea water. Oxidative precipitation of gold on the surface of the O2-producing microbes, probably cyanobacteria, could fix huge amounts of gold over large areas. Some of this microbially mediated gold is still preserved in thin kerogen layers ("carbon seams") that typically developed on erosional unconformities, scour surfaces and bedding planes in near-shore environments at around 2.9 Ga. This gold provided the principal source for the very rich placer deposits that formed by the subsequent sedimentary reworking of the delicate microbial mats on aeolian deflation surfaces, into fluvial channels and delta deposits, represented by Meso- to Neoarchaean auriferous conglomerates. Tectonic reworking of these first gold-rich sediments by orogenic processes explains the temporal peak of orogenic-type gold formation at around 2.7 to 2.4 Ga. With time, the strongly gold-enriched Archaean sediments became progressively eroded, covered or tectonically reworked, and their role as potential source of younger placer deposits diminished. This explains why Witwatersrand-type deposits younger than 2.4 Ga are rare and far less well-endowed and effectively missing in the rock record after 1.8 Ga.